O PSTU e as reformas previdenciária e universitária no governo Lula da Silva

Abstract

This study is an investigation on the positioning of the Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU, from the acronym in portuguese) in face of Lula da Silva’s pension and university reforms, during his first mandate (2003-2006), focusing on the roots of the theoretical and political conflict between the PSTU and Workers Party (PT, from the acronym in portuguese), on the PSTU’s characterization about government and about the mentioned reforms and on the ways to fight this party used to express its resistance to the government reforms. To achieve this goal, the author had taken declarations from two national leaders and from a Ceará PSTU leader, collected by semistructured interviews. There was, also, an analysis of documentary sources on this tesis subject, such as laws, ordinances, decrees, opinions, interim measures (MPs from the acronym in portuguese), constitutional amendment proposals, official reports, the PSTU newspaper - Socialist Review (2003 editions to 2006, the insues concerned to the pension and university reforms), magazines, books, parties programs, declarations from PSTU and PT meetings and national conferences. The results showed that: a) the root of the theoretical and political conflict between the PSTU and PT’s leadership comes from the beginning, the two parties have distinct historical and programmatic matrices, b) PSTU characterizes the Lula government as a popular front government sui generis; c) PSTU caught several disputes, trying to consolidate itself as a party among the working class and, during the pension and university reforms strungle, when the party had expressed the opinion that these reforms did not indicate the rights expansion and universalization, but were framed within the structural adjustment d) PSTU faced the sui generis popular front government and its reforms by means of direct actions - marches, demonstrations, public events, flyers in the trade union movement, strikes (as the one occurred in 2003 against the pension reform), propaganda, agitation, debates and plebiscites, etc.